Tissue Uptake Mechanisms Involved in the Clearance of Non-Protein Nanoparticles that Mimic LDL Composition: A Study with Knockout and Transgenic Mice

Lipid core nanoparticles (LDE) resembling LDL behave similarly to native LDL when injected in animals or subjects. In contact with plasma, LDE acquires apolipoproteins (apo) E, A‐I and C and bind to LDL receptors. LDE can be used to explore LDL metabolism or as a vehicle of drugs directed against tumoral or atherosclerotic sites. The aim was to investigate in knockout (KO) and transgenic mice the plasma clearance and tissue uptake of LDE labeled with ³H‐cholesteryl ether. LDE clearance was lower in LDLR KO and apoE KO mice than in wild type (WT) mice (p < 0.05). However, infusion of human apoE3 into the apoE KO mice increased LDE clearance. LDE clearance was higher in apoA‐I KO than in WT. In apoA‐I transgenic mice, LDE clearance was lower than in apoA‐I KO and than in apoA‐I KO infusion with human HDL. Infusion of human HDL into the apoA‐I KO mice resulted in higher LDE clearance than in the apoA‐I transgenic mice (p < 0.05). In apoA‐I KO and apoA‐I KO infused human HDL, the liver uptake was greater than in WT animals and apoA‐I transgenic animals (p < 0.05). LDE clearance was lower in apoE/A‐I KO than in WT. Infusion of human HDL increased LDE clearance in those double KO mice. No difference among the groups in LDE uptake by the tissues occurred. In conclusion, results support LDLR and apoE as the key players for LDE clearance, apoA‐I also influences those processes.     

The effect of different ceramic materials to improve hardness of organomineral fertilizer granules

Chicken litter (CL) is a waste generated by poultry farming and it that has increased significantly in recent years. Due to chicken litter levels of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and other nutrients, the CL has a potential use as fertilizer, nevertheless, this purpose has been threatened by the pollution of water resources owing to the leaching and disposal of these nutrients. The production of CL granular organomineral fertilizers (OMF) is one way of minimizing these problems and to add value to poultry waste. Thus, this study evaluates the potential of the use of different binder materials on the improvement of the hardness and nutrient release. For this, five ceramic materials were added in four different concentrations to the powder mixture containing Monoammonium Phosphate (MAP) and CL. The fertilizers were granulated and through hardness evaluation, it was possible to observe that the positive effect on the hardness depended on the additive used and its concentration. The most promising additive was magnesium oxide that, was able to improve the strength of by up to four times, when compared to the OMF control. The results shown that the nutrient release is not affected with addition different binder materials.     

Antiangiogenesis,Loss of Cell Adhesion and Apoptosis Are Involved in the Antitumoral Activity of Proteases from V. cundinamarcensis (C. candamarcensis) in Murine Melanoma B16F1

The proteolytic enzymes from V. cundinamarcensis latex, (P1G10), display healing activity in animal models following various types of lesions. P1G10 or the purified isoforms act as mitogens on fibroblast and epithelial cells by stimulating angiogenesis and wound healing in gastric and cutaneous ulcers models. Based on evidence that plant proteinases act as antitumorals, we verified this effect on a murine melanoma model. The antitumoral effect analyzed mice survival and tumor development after subcutaneous administration of P1G10 into C57BL/6J mice bearing B16F1 low metastatic melanoma. Possible factors involved in the antitumoral action were assessed, i.e., cytotoxicity, cell adhesion and apoptosis in vitro, haemoglobin (Hb), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), tumor growth factor-β (TGF-β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) content and N-acetyl-glucosaminidase (NAG) activity. We observed that P1G10 inhibited angiogenesis measured by the decline of Hb and VEGF within the tumor, and TGF-β displayed a non-significant increase and TNF-α showed a minor non-significant reduction. On the other hand, there was an increase in NAG activity. In treated B16F1 cells, apoptosis was induced along with decreased cell binding to extracellular matrix components (ECM) and anchorage, without impairing viability.     

Free Fatty Acids in Commercial Krill Oils: Concentrations,Compositions, and Implications for Oxidative Stability

The concentrations and pro-oxidative effects of free fatty acids in commercial krill oil are not well defined. We now report that krill oil free fatty acids account for 2–13% of total lipids in commercial krill oil (n = 8) that these compounds are enriched in eicosapentaenoic acid (+7.1%) and docosahexaenoic acid (+6.3%) relative to whole oils; and that this composition make them highly pro-oxidizing in marine triacylglycerol oils, but not in krill oil, which derives oxidative stability from both its phospholipids, and neutral lipids (the latter because of astaxanthin). Specific fatty acid esterification patterns showed that krill oil free fatty acids predominantly (88–93%) originated from phospholipids, mainly from the sn-2 position, which was eight-fold more hydrolyzed than the sn-1 position. Lipolysis was not ongoing in stored oils. Adding small amounts of krill oil (1–5%) to marine triacylglycerol oils significantly increased their oxidative stability and also their resistance to free fatty acid-mediated pro-oxidative effects.     

Matrix multiplication on the Intel Touchstone Delta

Matrix multiplication is a key primitive in block matrix algorithms such as those found in LAPACK. We present results from our study of matrix multiplication algorithms on the Intel Touchstone Delta, a distributed memory message-passing architecture with a two-dimensional mesh topology. We analyze and compare three algorithms and obtain an implementation, BiMMeR, that uses communication primitives highly suited to the Delta and exploits the single node assembly-coded matrix multiplication. Our algorithm is completely general, i.e. able to deal with various data layouts as well as arbitrary mesh aspect ratios and matrix dimensions, and has achieved parallel efficiency of 86 %, with overall peak performance in excess of 8 Gflops on 256 nodes for an 8800 × 8800 matrix. We describe BiMMeR's design and implementation and present performance results that demonstrate scalability and robust behavior over varying mesh topologies.